EXPERIENCE the HISTORICAL HEIGHT of POP and ROCK and PSYCHEDELIC CULTURE!

MAY EXPLODES!

Let’s Rock:

May 1: Elvis marries 21 year old Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas.
He has been dating her since she was fourteen.

May 4: Lunar Orbiter 4 launched by US; begins orbiting Moon May 7.

May 6: Pearls Before Swine begin recording an album called “One Nation Underground”. The LP includes a song called “Miss Morse”, which would be banned in New York when it was discovered that lead singer Tom Rapp was singing F-U-C-K in Morse code. After disc jockey Murray The K played the record on the air, local Boy Scouts
correctly interpreted the chorus and phoned in a complaint.

May 6: The Who’s Keith Moon offers this insightful advice to young
drummers during an interview in Melody Maker Magazine: “To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder.”

May 6: Two weeks after being pushed out of the top spot on the Cashbox Best Sellers list by The Monkees’ “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You”, Nancy and Frank Sinatra return to number one with “Something Stupid”.

May 6: 400 students seize administration building at Cheyney State College, Pennsylvania

May 7: Soviet youths openly defied police and danced The Twist in Moscow’s Red Square during May Day celebrations.

May 8: Muhammad Ali is indicted for refusing induction in US Army.

May 8: Gerry And The Pacemakers announced that they were splitting up, recognizing that they could ‘no longer keep pace with the rapidly changing UK Rock scene.’

May 11: The Bee Gees made their debut on the UK TV show Top Of The Pops, performing “New York Mining Disaster, 1941” which will enter the UK Pop chart two days later and go on to reach #12. In reality, there was no mining disaster in New York in 1941, although there was one in McIntire, Pennsylvania which killed 6 people.

May 12: The Jimi Hendrix Experience release their debut album, “Are You Experienced”; and with it Hendrix creates an Art Form. This album takes Rock and Psychedelia to its highest eschalon. Guitarists re-evaluate their career; Rockers, their lives.

May 12: 20th Cannes Film Festival; “Blowup” directed by Michelangelo Antonioni wins the Grand Prix du Festivall International du Film. The Yardbirds Beck/Page lineup were featured in the genre-spawning London-set psychedelic noire mystery, “Blow Up”, in a club scene performing “Stroll On”; (the “legal” version of “The Train kept A- Rollin’”). Toward the end of the scene Beck destroys his guitar onstage to emulate the soon-to-be legendary
destructo-showmanship of the Who’s Pete Townshend.

May 13: NY Yankee Mickey Mantle hits career HR #500 off Stu Miller.

May 15: Paul McCartney meets his future wife Linda Eastman.

May 15: “In re Gault”, US Supreme Court rules juveniles accused of crimes should be given same legal rights as adults.

May 16: The Monkees’ third LP, “Headquarters” was released. It was their first album recorded primarily by the four members of the group and would reach #1 in the US for one week before being relegated to second place for eleven consecutive weeks by “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

May 20: The BBC announces that it will not play The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life”, claiming it contained explicit drug references. On the same day, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr go to the BBC to record interviews for the show Where It’s At.

May 20: The Young Rascals scores the second of their three Billboard #1 records when “Groovin” reaches the top. It made #8 in the UK. Felix Cavalieri and Eddie Brigati wrote this song because their work schedule would only allow them to see their girlfriends on Sunday afternoons.

May 20: Manuel Fernandez, founding member and organist for Los Bravos on their 1966 hit “Black Is Black”, committed suicide at 23.

May 22: “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” debuts on NET (now PBS).

May 25: John Lennon takes delivery of his psychedelically painted Rolls Royce.

May 26: The Mothers of Invention release the classic “Absolutely Free” album.

May 26: The Beatles masterpiece, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released in the UK, one week before its American June 1st debut. The album took over 700 hours to record under the direction of George Martin and cost $75,000 to produce. A then state-of-the-art four track recorder was used to build each song layer by layer. The LP spent 22 weeks at the top of the UK albums chart and 15 weeks at number one in the US. The iconic album cover, depicting the band posing in front of a collage of celebrities and historical figures, was designed by English pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth based on a sketch by Paul McCartney. “Sgt. Pepper” has now sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

May 27: Otis Redding’s backup band, The Bar-Kays, enter the US charts with “Soul Finger”, an instrumental that will peak at #3 R&B and #17 Pop. Six months later, four members of the band died in the plane crash that killed Redding.

May 27: Columbia and RCA Victor, two of America’s biggest record labels, announce that they will raise the list price of L.P.s by one dollar on June 1st. It’s the first increase since 1953.

May 28: 1967: Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pink Floyd were among the performers at the Tulip Bulb Auction Hall in Spalding, Lincoln, England.

May 28: A new band from Los Angeles,The Doors, release their first single, “Light My Fire”. It reached #1 and became one of the Top 20 Songs of the Rock Era. The Doors went on to have 17 hits, including three Top 10 songs.

May 30: World-Class Daredevil, Robert “Evel” Knievel, jumps 16 automobiles on his motorcycle.

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